World War III update Monday, 7/10/06

It’s time to stop the double-speak, hence forth I am calling things as I see them. This is not “The Global War on Terror”, or GWOT as the campaign ribbons have it. It’s World War III, and it’sÂ the war against Islamic Imperialism, or Islamofascism.

There is good news across several fronts:

The murderous,Â cowardlyÂ thug responsible for the Beslan school massacre has been killed:

Russia’s most wanted man, Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, has been killed by the country’s special forces, the state security chief has told President Vladimir Putin.

FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev said on Monday that Basayev, who claimed responsibility for the 2004 Beslan school attack in which 331 people, half of them children, were killed, was planning an attack to coincide with Russia hosting the G8 summit of world leaders this weekend

In Darfur, a new report links the Janjaweed islamofascists responsible for genocide to Al Queda. See The story at Counter Terrorism Blog.In Urzugan, Afghanistan, Forty Taleban are destroyed ( one note since it’s the pusillanimous BBC reporting, they don’t specify in the article but 99% of the deaths have been Taleban, the only kills the Taleban have are soft targets and occasionally during firefights they do get one or two Coalition or NATO soldiers:

, are destroyed ( one note since it’s the pusillanimous BBC reporting, they don’t specify in the article but 99% of the deaths have been Taleban, the only kills the Taleban have are soft targets and occasionally during firefights they do get one or two Coalition or NATO soldiers:

US led-coalition troops and Afghan forces have killed more than 40 insurgents in a raid in southern Afghanistan, the coalition says.

An Afghan soldier was killed and three coalition soldiers are said to have been wounded in the operation which took place in Uruzgan province.

A spokesman said the raid was conducted on a “known extremist compound”.

Afghanistan has seen an upsurge in violence by the Taleban and their allies this year, with hundreds killed.

(*Thanos: the great bulk of the deaths are Taleban, with very few Coalition or Nato casualties, the Taleban cowards have been able to take out a few soft, civilian targets such as school busses, with little military effect but some drama.)

Australian police were searching for possible terrorism charges to file against a fugitive being extradited from Lebanon.

Saleh Jamal, due to be brought back to Australia this week after serving time for firearms and passport fraud offenses, faces four criminal charges when he lands in Sydney, including alleged involvement with a shooting attack on a police station in 1998.

Police are now looking at his activities in Australia between then and when he fled the country is 2004, The Australian reported Monday. Although out on bail when he absconded, he was under additional investigation then on suspicion of having planned possible acts of terrorism.

Fighting surged in Mogadishu on Monday between Islamist militias and fighters loyal to the city’s last warlords, pushing the death toll over two days to at least 60 and pounding a key hospital with artillery and gunfire.

Residents feared the death toll would climb even further in the most ferocious fighting in the capital since the Islamists seized it a month ago from an alliance of U.S.-backed warlords.

“The hospital is under very heavy mortar and artillery attack and stray bullets are hitting. Chaos is everywhere in the hospital and staff are running away,” Abdikadir Sheikh, a medical official at Mogadishu’s Madina Hospital, told Reuters by phone as artillery and gunfire crackled behind him.

In Russia again five muslims have started trial on terror charges related to a plot to disrupt Kazan’s Millenial celebration last year. The usual rights groups are protesting:

Five Muslim teenagers appeared in court Monday accused of involvement in a thwarted terrorist plot that prosecutors say was aimed at disrupting this city’s millennial celebration last year.

Activists and relatives say the trial is an attempt to frame the young men, who are among 24 defendants charged with plotting to commit terrorist attacks and create an Islamic state in the traditionally Muslim central Russian region of Tatarstan.

The teenagers and 19 adult defendants face up to 10 years in prison if convicted. All insist they are innocent.

Judge Ilfir Sakhilov, summing up the allegations, said members of an underground extremist group, Islamic Jamaat, had undergone training in Muslim militant camps, collected weapons and planned to blow up businesses on the eve of the provincial capital’s celebration in August 2005.